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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

The roots of corruption run deep

by

503 days ago
20231012

Cur­rent head­lines about ex­tor­tion of busi­ness­es by crim­i­nal gangs and fraud­u­lent prac­tices be­ing un­cov­ered at state en­ti­ties, high­light the need for more in­ten­sive an­ti-cor­rup­tion laws, sys­tems and prac­tices at every lev­el in this so­ci­ety.

They are the lat­est re­minders of a long, shame­ful his­to­ry of bribery, crony­ism, nepo­tism and pa­tron­age, pre-dat­ing even the at­tain­ment of In­de­pen­dence in 1962, that has drained this coun­try’s wealth and ham­pered its de­vel­op­ment.

The ex­tor­tion of busi­ness­es, which has evolved in­to a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar crim­i­nal en­ter­prise — the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC) es­ti­mates it costs T&T mil­lions of dol­lars a day — had its gen­e­sis decades ago with crim­i­nal in­fil­tra­tion in­to the fore­run­ners to the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP).

Fail­ure by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments to ex­or­cise “ghost gangs” from state-run tem­po­rary em­ploy­ment pro­grammes has al­lowed crim­i­nals to il­le­gal­ly en­rich them­selves at the ex­pense of tax­pay­ers. That il­le­gal prac­tice has evolved and ex­pand­ed, with small and medi­um busi­ness­es and con­trac­tors now tar­get­ed by gang­sters de­mand­ing “jobs” for their min­ions and pro­tec­tion mon­ey.

Decades of cor­rup­tion in so­cial wel­fare pro­grammes have al­so been ex­posed in re­cent years, in­clud­ing a high in­ci­dence of fraud and stolen so­cial wel­fare cheques, abuse of the Food Sup­port Pro­gramme by gain­ful­ly em­ployed in­di­vid­u­als and peo­ple who re­side abroad, as well as re­cent al­le­ga­tions of fraud and pos­si­ble mon­ey laun­der­ing in a 2012 pro­gramme in­tend­ed to as­sist needy chil­dren.

Un­der the watch of Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke, who has been vo­cal in his stance against cor­rup­tion, there have been ar­rests and charges against Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion em­ploy­ees and even the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) has been un­der scruti­ny for fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ties.

These are just the lat­est man­i­fes­ta­tions of a cul­ture of cor­rup­tion and crime that has deep roots in this na­tion. Re­peat­ed fail­ures to weed out prac­tices that have sur­faced time and again with scan­dalous and cost­ly con­se­quences, have cre­at­ed a breed­ing ground for do­mes­tic and transna­tion­al vi­o­lence and crime.

In too many in­stances, there has been high-lev­el po­lit­i­cal fa­cil­i­ta­tion.

More than four decades lat­er, this na­tion still strug­gles to shake off the taint of the DC-9 scan­dal in which the late John O’Hal­lo­ran, a high-rank­ing mem­ber of the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion of Dr Er­ic Williams, was im­pli­cat­ed. There were al­so se­vere reper­cus­sions from the Ca­roni Rac­ing Com­plex project which was halt­ed amidst al­leged cor­rup­tion.

In the 1990s, the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port cor­rup­tion cas­es, re­gard­ed as the biggest in this coun­try’s his­to­ry and the longest on tri­al, saw al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, bid-rig­ging, kick­backs, bid in­fla­tion, po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence and fraud lev­elled against promi­nent UNC fi­nanciers and for­mer gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

All of these should have served as cau­tion­ary tales to the leg­is­la­tors, pol­i­cy­mak­ers and so­ci­ety lead­ers who have emerged since then about the cor­ro­sive ef­fects of cor­rup­tion.

But it seems lessons have not been learnt, as cor­rup­tion con­tin­ues to fes­ter where trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty are ab­sent or in­ad­e­quate.

T&T has been se­ri­ous­ly harmed by white-col­lar crim­i­nals, in­clud­ing some pow­er­ful fig­ures who mis­use their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic pow­er for pri­vate gains.

And the vic­tims are or­di­nary cit­i­zens who are reg­u­lar­ly robbed of their rights and free­doms to en­joy even ba­sic ser­vices.

The ques­tion is whether any­one cur­rent­ly in a po­si­tion of pow­er and in­flu­ence will demon­strate the courage and con­vic­tion to be a cor­rup­tion buster. A strong co­hort of such in­di­vid­u­als is need­ed to clean up all this mess.


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